If you have been liv­ing under a rock in the past few weeks, then you might have missed one of the biggest ker­fuf­fles in Inter­net his­tory. Or so it seems.

No, I’m not talk­ing about the con­tested elec­tions in Iran.

I’m talk­ing about the recent Face­book user­name frenzy, when Face­book allowed its users to reg­is­ter user­names, mak­ing pro­file addresses shorter and more memorable.

Lead­ing up to it, they used a count­down timer. Brilliant.

Last week, I was watch­ing a movie with my wife Sylvie Fortin. At 12:01 AM, I decided to log onto Face­book using my iPhone, just to see. And wouldn’t you know it? I man­aged to secure Face​book​.com/​m​i​c​h​e​l​f​o​r​tin for me, and Face​book​.com/​l​i​c​o​r​ice for our fan page.

(Sylvie also cap­tured “sylviefortin” for herself.)

The Licorice Group, LLC is the name of our pub­lish­ing com­pany, located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Obvi­ously, “miche­landsylviefortin” was way too long and would defeat the pur­pose of get­ting a shorter mnemonic. So I decided on “licorice.”

Any­way, you might be won­der­ing why I said this was a ker­fuf­fle. Well, hold on tight, because this one is a doozie (and there’s a mar­ket­ing les­son in here, too)…

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My last post, where a dis­grun­tled copy­writer demanded “the truth” about cre­at­ing wealth in copy­writ­ing, inspired copy­writer Andrew Cavanagh to share the story of his begin­nings on my forum:

“Here’s how I made my first ‘money’ in copywriting.”

Then one by one, other copy­writ­ers started adding their own. The responses were noth­ing short of amazing!

Many of the sto­ries show that there’s indeed hope. They also show that we were all strug­gling copy­writ­ers once, too. And we didn’t all become overnight mil­lion­aires with million-​​dollar clients, as “Chuck,” the dis­il­lu­sioned copy­writer, postulated.

I loved it so much that I posted my own story. I’ve decided to share it with you here. (By the way, the pic­ture at the top is of me, circa 1991. A lot thin­ner, with glasses, and a lot more hair!) Any­way, here is my story…

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